Books for Kids: Scion of the Fox

S.M. Beiko's tale is Book 1 in The Realms of Ancient trilogy

The cover illustration drew me in. It shows a young fox in a snow-covered forest, an accompanying blurb promising “a thrilling tale underscored by excellent, deep, and unique world-building.”

Which it turned out to be.

But I’d forgotten the difficulties I always have with elaborate fantasy worlds. My brain doesn’t seem to assimilate the often-strange names and unusual characters, nor am I good at keeping up with the worlds and rules that surface in these stories.

So it’s probably not surprising that it took me a while to get through this 427-page novel — Book 1 in a trilogy called The Realms of Ancient. Scion of the Fox introduces us to Roan Harken, a 17-year-old girl who was orphaned as a child and now is living with her aunt and semi-comatose grandmother in Winnipeg. By the time I finished the book, I’d grown thoroughly fond of Roan and understood why the author dedicated this novel “To any young person who has ever felt powerless…”

Scion of the Fox by S.M. Beiko [ECW Press]

Roan is faced with a task that would make any person feel that way: She must keep her corner of the world in balance and battle Zabor, a huge snake-monster trapped under the ice of the Assiniboine River, who demands the sacrifice of five children each spring — one from each of five spirit families that have special powers and watch over us all — in order to spare the Red River Valley from another devastating flood.

The Five Families include powerful Denizens who retain human bodies but are guided by animal spirits — Seal for water, Deer for spirit, Owl for air, Rabbit for earth, and Fox for fire — and Roan’s grandmother, Cecilia, is the Fox Denizen. With her human body fading, however, a successor is needed and Roan eventually becomes Scion of the Fox and takes over her grandmother’s duties, wondering all the while if she is up to the task.

Luckily, she doesn’t have to do battle alone. Counterparts from the other four families join her and while the battles in which they find themselves are far from settled by the end of Book 1. Children of the Bloodlands, to be published this fall, appears to move the action from Winnipeg to Scotland instead. Readers who love fantasy fiction are bound to embrace Roan and her cohorts, following them throughout the trilogy.

I myself still have a hard time with fantastical creatures like that wretched Zabor, and my stomach did heave a little when the author described gruesome battles or disconcerting scenes like moths emerging from a lump in Roan’s left eye — a lump she’d assumed was a chronic eye infection.

Every so often the story took turns that I thought were derivative of other fantasy tales (the orphaned Roan, for example, immediately brought to mind another orphan tasked with seemingly insurmountable problems: Harry Potter), but what kept the book alive for me was its setting. It isn’t every day you come across a fantastical novel set in Winnipeg. And I loved the author’s well-defined and diverse characters, especially the Indigenous one representing the Seal Family.